The Best Breakfast Tacos in East Austin

The Austin Chronicle's Best of Austin readers' poll named Veracruz All Natural the city's best taco and its best breakfast taco in 2023, and Texas Monthly scored its migas taco 4.75 on the magazine's 120 Best Tacos in Austin list at $3. The Infatuation's verdict is blunter: this is "the bar for all other migas tacos." Three independent sources arriving at the same answer is the whole reason it sits at number one here.

What makes it is the chips. Veracruz fries its own tortilla chips and folds them into peppery scrambled eggs with pico de gallo, so the crunch is still there when the taco reaches you. The family has been at this since 2008 and now runs eight locations across Austin, Sunset Valley and Round Rock, which means the Webberville Road dining room is not a secret and the line is real. It is also the only entry on this list that will feed you a proper breakfast taco at 8 p.m. on a Saturday.

Texas Monthly's restaurant listing calls Granny's the best breakfast taco joint in Austin, and the taco it is famous for does not contain an egg. The chilaquil is crispy corn chips in a flour tortilla with house-made mole, cotija, onion and pickled jalapeno, and you choose mole, salsa roja or salsa verde. If you have never had a breakfast taco built this way, this is the one worth the detour. Note that the mole contains nuts and gluten.

It started in 2016 as a food truck in a remodelled ambulance. Maria Rios has since retired and sold the business to her son, Rey Hernandez, who has grown it past the original truck, and the East 7th site took over a neighbouring coffee shop so there is now indoor seating. CBS Austin reported that Yelp placed Granny's fourth on its 2022 list of the hundred best taco spots in the United States. We are not publishing hours for it, because the listings we found disagree and none of them came from the business.

Joe's has been feeding this stretch of East 7th since 1962 and the Avila family is now on its fourth generation running it. The business traces back further than that, to La Oriental Grocery and Bakery on East 9th. Texas Monthly rated the barbacoa taco 4.75 at $1.99 on its 120 Best Tacos in Austin list, and The Infatuation scores Joe's 8.6, the highest mark it gives any East Austin breakfast taco spot.

Order the migas con todo or the bacon, which Austin Monthly reported is floured and rested overnight before it hits the griddle. The house flour tortillas are the reason people put up with the wait, and Joe's own site is honest about that wait: 25 to 45 minutes on weekends after 9.30 a.m. A few other things it tells you plainly, so you are not surprised at the register. There is a 3% packaging fee, contactless payment is not accepted, parties larger than eight are not seated, phone orders stop at 1 p.m. and takeout orders stop at 1.45 p.m.

Marcelino's is the opposite of a sit-down breakfast. Texas Monthly's Austin taco coverage describes the system: your order is called by the number on your receipt stub, everything comes wrapped in foil and bagged to go, and because there is no seating most people eat off the trunk of the car. The tacos are assembled in front of you down a line, which is also why they come out fast.

Texas Monthly singles out the carne guisada and the smoked Elgin sausage taco, and notes the sausage is often first to sell out. Austin Monthly's pick here is the papas rancheras and the extra-crispy broken bacon. The Infatuation adds a detail that tells you what kind of place this is: the cheese is sliced off a stack rather than grated. Other fillings worth knowing about are rajas and repollo asado.

Austin Monthly reported that Tacos Guerrero makes its own corn and flour tortillas daily, which is rare at this price and is most of the case for coming here. The Infatuation scores it 8.1 and describes a tiny orange trailer run by one woman, with the migas built on tortilla strips that have not gone soggy and refried beans included by default rather than as an add-on.

Ask for the molcajete salsa, which both guides single out, and consider the chorizo and egg or the nopales taco. There are only a few picnic tables, so the sensible plan is to take the bag somewhere else. We are not listing hours here because every source we checked gave a different answer or belonged to a different business on the same road.

Two school teachers, Juan and Myrna Meza, opened this in 1980, and the reason it is still full at 9 a.m. is the Don Juan, a taco built at a scale that treats sharing as the default. Juan in a Million's own site lists it on Business Insider's Top 50 Breakfast Tacos in the United States and quotes Eater calling the place the home of the best hangover eats in Austin.

This is the entry on the list to pick when you have visitors, when you want a table and a server rather than a window and a foil packet, or when you want a breakfast plate instead of a taco. It is also the most consistent on hours. Seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., with no closed day to plan around.

Aurelio and Rosa Torres opened Mi Madre's in 1990 as a ten-seat taco shop and it has grown into the Manor Road sit-down breakfast. The draw is range. The Infatuation counts 18 preset breakfast tacos on the menu and recommends the machacado with egg and the bean, egg and cheese, which means you can take a table of people with different opinions here and everyone orders what they actually want.

Two honest notes. This address is 78722 on Manor Road, the eastside edge of Cherrywood rather than East Austin proper, so it is the furthest north entry on this list. And the patio has grackles, which The Infatuation warns about and which are not a joke if you leave a plate unattended.